Rorschach in Design: When One Thing Leads To Another – Part One

As a kid I’m sure many of you lounged on the grass, sun beating on your cheeks, gentle breezes rustling through your hair looking upward as clouds dance by your view. It isn’t long before those clouds start to take shape, a bunny perhaps, maybe a turtle? It doesn’t take much for our minds to make something out from seemingly a random array of shapes. Like klecksography for instance. I’m sure you have heard of it before, take ink and blot it on a sheet of paper, then fold. Then unfold it to reveal a some-what symmetrical image. Like a butterfly perhaps? Eventually it made people think, gee why do we see what see. Which gave me a pause for thought. Why do we do that?

First Step

The thought came to me as I stared at the textured ceiling of my work space and giggled that a shape looked similar to B.O.B from Monsters VS Aliens. Rorschach was both fan of klecksography and the sciences and like many of us not sure what to pursue. It shouldn’t be surprise when the Rorschach Test was developed, combing klecksography and psychology.

I wanted to create a design or art that was void of stress and technicalities. I opened Illustrator and created the above image.

So….what does it look like to you? It looked like a lot of things to me at first, a ‘shoe on fire’, ‘boat on water’, a thumbprint maybe? After humming and hawing for a bit I saw the potential of a wing. Observe….

Steps to a Butterfly Design

Once I found a direction of the design I built it up to form a butterfly. One “pen curve” at a time. After the design was complete I used a basic format to form a cohesive pattern. A touch of warm colors was added to give depth, and now I’m itching to make it into a fabric. Another fancy pattern added to my arsenal 🙂

Stay tuned for Part Two, where I turn a random swirly design into art.